


but like 2% milk, or seitan beef, i almost taste the same

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Pre-Canon, Rule 63, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 21:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12873312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: As far as Gansey can tell, Devin's only interests are meticulously-researched biographies of U.S. presidents, whispered arguments with her father, and boys. This gives them roughly one and one-half things in common, two if Gansey has gone long enough without a date to forget how pointlessly distracting she finds the whole process. That's one and one-half to two more things in common than Devin has with either of her sisters, which seems to partially but not at all satisfactorily explain why she doesn't fit with the rest of the family.





	but like 2% milk, or seitan beef, i almost taste the same

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a quick reference to domestic abuse that ultimately isn't happening. Title from Settle For Me from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

As far as Gansey can tell, Devin's only interests are meticulously-researched biographies of U.S. presidents, whispered arguments with her father, and boys. This gives them roughly one and one-half things in common, two if Gansey has gone long enough without a date to forget how pointlessly distracting she finds the whole process. That's one and one-half to two more things in common than Devin has with either of her sisters, which seems to partially but not at all satisfactorily explain why she doesn't fit with the rest of the family.

Devin is never single for more than an afternoon at a time, even though she isn't particularly attractive. Gansey knows from watching Helen work that 'severe' and 'aloof' can be very magnetic qualities in a woman, but feels that Devin falls of a good deal short of elegant, landing a bit closer to irritable schoolmarm. Gansey sympathizes. Her features, all individually pleasing, come together to form a whole that lacks anything to make it  _dis_ pleasing, and so the overall effect is categorized as pretty, even though she's almost entirely sure she isn't, really.

When Ronan introduced Gansey, she did so with the bursting pride of an elementary schooler at Show and Tell, until she got to Devin. Then her voice went flat and her eyebrows drew together, and when Gansey asked about it later, she said, "Devin is a bitch," and didn't elaborate. It doesn't sit well with Gansey, particularly, to be made complicit in whatever greater-than-sibling-rivalry sibling rivalry the two have going on, but Ronan is her friend and Devin isn't, and though she sometimes suspects herself of being on the wrong side of history, there's nothing to be done about it.

It's just that Ronan has the family at her back, while Devin has nothing but an impeccable academic record and some degree of social success. She must feel the disparity but never acts like it, gives as good as she gets, which is really just a few rude comments and a general iciness that makes it impossible to read these digs as jokes. Aurora tends to respond to these comments, from either girl, with a just-barely-disapproving look, as if she can't marshal enough negativity for more than the slightest admonishment. Niall, when he's there to respond at all, looks pleased, like he's glad to see he's raised fighters. He's either unaware of the import given to his favor or, more likely, he knows but sees nothing wrong with the conflict brewing.

"It's nice of you to pretend not to notice Devin's huge embarrassing crush on you," Ronan says one night. Niall was present in the farmhouse for just under three hours, and spent two of those hours locked away in his study with Devin. He came out, kissed Martha and Ronan on the forehead and Aurora on the lips, and disappeared again. Then, as if the tension wasn't obvious, Gansey made the mistake at laughing at one of Devin's jokes over dinner. She's been waiting for something to come of it since then, but this is still a surprise. She's been comparing her Latin homework to Ronan's, trying not to begrudge the ease with which it comes to her, and she holds the notebooks in either hand as if they can spare her what's coming. Ronan continues, voice light and careless, "I guess you'd have no way of knowing. But when you're not here, neither is she. It's like she thinks she's too good for us."

Gansey catches a consistently misspelled word in her assignment and focuses on erasing every instance of it. Her family doesn't have drama like the Lynches, and if they did, they'd leave the depths unplumbed for propriety's sake. "I'm sure that isn't true."

"It is. She canceled a  _date_ last week, and then spent the whole night arguing with you about school vouchers." Ronan looks at her sideways. "I think she's planning to break up with what's-his-face, so you might have a shot." Gansey doesn't particularly feel that this comment merits a response, but Ronan jabs a sharp elbow into her side, and so she huffs out a laugh, ever obliging. Ronan seems less than satisfied. "You wouldn't say  _yes_  or anything, if she actually asked." Ronan is gifted at many things, but subtlety has never been part of her repertoire. The answer is obviously important to her, but Gansey has no idea why.

"Of course not! She's your  _sister_. Anyway, I'm not attracted to girls." This isn't, she's beginning to suspect, strictly true, but it's close enough to alleviate any guilt she might feel. She feels Ronan sag at her side. It feels like passing a test with not-quite-flying colors, like she's gotten the most important bits right but missed something huge.

Gansey exiles herself to the family room when Ronan falls asleep. The one downside of staying at the Barns, besides the never-ending undercurrent of familial tension, is the time she has to fill between Ronan drifting off and her own entrance into fitful sleep. That, and being dragged to Mass on Sundays. Gansey has never been the type of girl to need someone to entertain her, but there's something very slightly off about the Barns at night, something in the stretching of the shadows that makes it too easy to get lost in her worse memories. She jumps when the door bangs open—she isn't allowed to know, exactly, what Niall does for work, but it clearly isn't on the up-and-up—but calms when she hears a set of footsteps shuffle into the kitchen. A robber or hitman or vengeance-minded attacker probably wouldn't stop for a midnight snack.

Devin slumps her way into the room, looking for the first time like she doesn't have an iron rod for a spine. She's clutching a bag of frozen spinach to a yellowing around her left eye. There's something off about her gait, and a dark spot on the arm of her sweater that could be the evening's gravy, or else a once bleeding wound.

"What are you doing up?" Devin's voice sounds raw, like she's spent hours screaming. "It's—" She lifts her arm as if to check her watch, but drops it from the strain. "It's late," she finishes weakly.

"I've never slept well." Gansey shrugs, shutting her book. "I use the time to study. Are you—" She pauses, sure that there is a right way to handle this, and about a dozen wrong ones. Maybe she ought to look up the number for some kind of hotline. She can't remember the name of Devin's current boyfriend anyway, just the crisply over-gelled quiff of his hair. "Did—Who did this to you?"

Devin collapses onto the couch, closer than they've ever been before. At this distance, she smells like lavender and sweat and freshly-turned dirt. She squeezes the bag against her face, ice melting slowly down the plane of her cheek, and cracks her neck loudly enough for Gansey to hear. "No one you need to be concerned about."

The boyfriend's name comes to Gansey like an epiphany. "David!" she exclaims, too buoyantly for the situation at hand. She tries to arrange her features into something more somber. "Did something happen between you and David? Do you need—help? Someone to talk to? A place to go?"

Devin continues rolling up her stained sleeve, revealing a cut that stretches from her elbow to her shoulder. She sounds bored when she says, "His name is Bruce, and we broke up yesterday, and it wasn't him. Don't worry about it."

Gansey spends enough time alone in the wilderness for some grasp of first aid to be a necessity. As she retrieves the Lynches' oft-used kit from the hall closet, she tries to mentally rotate the process, to figure out how to apply it to someone else. Devin's eyebrows go up when Gansey walks back into the room, like she thought Gansey might have taken that as her cue to leave. It feels rather unbearably sad. Gansey squeezes her eyes shut, tries to force down the part of her that's been wishing she'd just stayed on her side of Ronan's bed, warm and soft and jittery-legged. She pulls Devin's sleeve up another careful half-inch. Some fibers stick in the tacky blood, but Devin doesn't flinch, not then and not when Gansey cleans the wound. It isn't as bad as it initially looked, with the gore wiped away. It's long but shallow, and neat, intentional.

"Does this have something to do with your father's line of work?" she asks, focused on the way Devin's skin is split open beneath her fingers.

"It doesn't matter," Devin says, which is not a denial.

"He shouldn't be involving you in this." Gansey digs through the overflowing kit until she finds something that looks like a likely candidate for a bruise salve and begins to apply it to Devin's eye.  "It's dangerous. You're his daughter, and he's supposed to be protecting you, not walking you into near-fatal situations."

Devin scoffs, wrinkling and then smoothing out the skin under Gansey's hand. It occurs to her only then that this is a task manageable with one good arm, but she's in too deep to turn back. "'Near-fatal' is something of an exaggeration."

"What happened to your leg?" Gansey asks, thinking of the awkward shuffle she heard when Devin came in.

"Nothing that won't heal." She digs her fingers into the thigh that must be giving her trouble, leaning away at the same time so that Gansey's hand hovers for a moment in the air in front of her face. 

Devin ordinarily keeps her riotous curls tamed into a single sheet of hair that falls around her jawbone and sharpens the angles of her face. Even on the rare occasions when Gansey has caught her in the early-morning halls, her hair has always been done. Now, the strands around her ear have reverted to a corkscrew holding pattern. Gansey resists the urge to wind one of the spirals around her little finger. It's a stupid impulse, one she can't explain, except that Devin is usually so guarded. She would fit in much better in D.C., but there's no exchange program for families, nothing that would let her try out the understated environment of Gansey's home life.

She can't stop thinking about what Ronan said, about Devin's supposed crush. "Why did you break up with—" The name escapes her again, a blankness that is new and frustrating. She was raised networking and schmoozing, remembering the little details that make whoever she's talking to feel special. She can't think of a reason she should be so incapable of retaining the names of Devin's boyfriends, numerous though they may be.

"Bruce," Devin says, a bit peevish. "The relationship had run its course. It happens."

The bruise doesn't look as bad as Gansey remembers it being. The logical part of her brain knows she must have dramatized it, adrenaline high from the near miss with a shadowy assassin, but she remembers what it was like, the tender skin beneath her fingers, and she can't quite believe something she touched is healing. She wants to touch it again, wonders if she could feel it repairing itself.

Gansey focuses on putting the first aid kit in order, rewrapping rolls of gauze and separating alcohol pads from single-dose packets of aspirin. It's nearly four, but she's as awake as she's ever been. The Barns very often has the feeling of something waiting to happen, and she's tapped into that now. There's something she ought to say, and knows it, but can't think of exactly what. She settles for, "It isn't fair to you, whatever your father's gotten you into." Which makes Devin laugh, short and harsh, but when Gansey next looks up, she's being watched, the way someone might observe a lab rat. She makes eye contact, because that's what she was raised for, but in the dim light of the family room, it feels too intimate. She doesn't look away, and Devin doesn't either, and then suddenly they're closer than they were a moment ago, close enough that there's really only one thing left to do.

Devin's romantic success makes sense then, and Gansey allows herself to be lost in it, in the sensation of a mouth against her own and teeth on her lower lip. She should be worried, about what this means, about what comes next, about what happens if someone walks in. Instead, her life feels simple for the first time. What's between them isn't love, isn't even something that might grow  _in_ to love, but it feels right for the moment. Gansey is always planning, always thinking several steps ahead, but now she doesn't bother with implications, just leans in deeper. 

She must rest too much weight on Devin's injured leg, because she groans and pulls away, just for a second, but the spell breaks. Gansey remembers where and who she is, remembers the presence of consequence in her life. There's a moment, one Gansey won't recognize until much too late, where she could say anything and get a yes in return. She could ask Devin to move to Nebraska with her to become sapphic dairy farmers, and the idea would receive at least very serious consideration. What she says, though, is, "I don't know who Ronan would kill first if she found out about this." Devin's face shutters, the cracked-open vulnerability gone. Gansey regrets its disappearance, but has no idea how to go about getting it back, or even if she ought to.

"It would be me." Devin doesn't sound sad at all, crisp and cold like she's discussing something other than her sister's simmering resentment for her. It's hard to believe that this is the same girl who had her hands tangled in Gansey's hair under a minute ago. "She'd give you a second chance."


End file.
